Masochismet
by Fearful Little Thing
Summary: The Graverobber stood beside the tomb, looking down at the bones within. This was her temple - Shilo's own form of ancestor worship. Gr/Sh
1. Comfort

**Notes**: I make no guarantees that this will ever be finished. However, each 'chapter' has an ending that can act as 'the' ending so you needn't fear a cliffhanger in the traditional sense. Most of these were written at work, or in the middle of the night, so please bear with me.

As always, dedicated to the lovely lady in my life.

I own nothing that you recognise.

-

**Masochism**: Gratification gained from pain, deprivation, degradation; inflicted or imposed on oneself, either as a result of one's own actions or the actions of others.  
**Kismet**: Fate, destiny.

* * *

The smell of old death was a comfort. The musky sweet smell of dust and desiccated flesh was not borne by the air like any normal scent. It lingered, just hanging in the air, seeping rather than wafting. It was heavier than the air, thicker close to the ground, cloying like mold and incense. Breathing it in made it a part of you, took you to the dark parts of the earth. It made you think of ancient cultures that revered the dead, ancestor worship with great-grandfather's skull on the altar.

She hadn't realised that the smell had become a comfort to her. After so long seeing her mother's tomb as a refuge, a place to be herself away from the often confining pink and lace of her bedroom, no wonder she would associate the smell of a tomb with comfort and peace.

Shilo needed a little comfort and peace. The marble coffin was not bolted in place, the lid relied only on its own weight and design to keep closed. Shilo set her hands against the lid and pushed, digging her toes in against the ground for leverage. Stone grated on stone, something in her back strained too hard and with the sound of nails on chalkboard the lid suddenly moved. It teetered for a moment on the very edge, rocking back and forth. Panting, holding on to the edge of the coffin to keep herself upright, Shilo could not stop it from falling. The marble crashed to the ground, cracking into three pieces and raising a cloud of dust from the floor. She would never get it back on, but that didn't matter so much now. There was nobody but her who visited anymore.

Dust slowly settled again. Carefully, waiting for the feeling of horror she was sure would come, Shilo peered down into the coffin.

The body was little more than bones covered in leathery skin, brittle curls arranged about its eyeless face, a crumbling lace dress covering it from neck to ankles. The papery remnants of long-dead roses lay on its sunken chest. The horror never came. She looked down at the corpse, feeling oddly detached. So this was what all the fuss was about, this woman. She was nothing more than a husk now.

"Hello, mother," Shilo whispered.


	2. Rumour

It was curiosity as much as anything that drove him to that particular crypt. The lights had been off in the Wallace house for almost a month and yet the sturdy reinforced doors and iron bars on the windows had deterred all of the usual vermin. However, the Graverobber was not your usual kind of vermin.  
The crypt led to the house, he knew that. He'd seen it, watched her emerge while he lurked in the darkness behind crumbling tombstones. He had made a point to watch that door these last few weeks but nothing had stirred. No light flared, no shadow passed before the tiny window. He was certain this door would not be locked.  
A single touch to the door proved him right, hinges creaking as it swung open. He had chosen the perfect time of day to satiate curiosity. It was early evening, too early for genecops to be prowling, likewise too early for the average prowler.

Graverobber slipped into the marble tomb as quiet as a mouse, carefully shutting the door behind him. He turned, an eyebrow arching upwards as he considered the tomb before him. A slab of marble lay on the floor, collecting dust in the cracks and breaks it had gained from being pushed to the floor. A splash of puffy black chiffon peeked out of the open coffin, far too new to belong to any corpse interred here.  
"Well, well," Graverobber drawled, leaning over the coffin to look down at its inhabitants, one living, one very dead. "Goldilocks found her bed."

"Go away." The girl's voice was dull. She didn't look up from where she lay, curled up with the long-dead corpse as if it were a favourite teddy bear. When he made no move to leave or even lean back she cast a glare at him.

Graverobber just flashed her his most charming grin.

Shilo sat up, skirt rustling, looking very annoyed. Adorably annoyed in fact.

"The dead arises," Graverobber quipped, amused by her glare and not the least bit sorry. He leant closer, smiling wickedly. "Sleeping in coffins, little girl. Beds not good enough for you anymore?"

"Go away," Shilo repeated, the glare becoming dangerously close to a pout. "What are you doing here?" She asked, seeming to rethink her stratagem. "Don't you have someone else to bother?"

"I came to steal," Graverobber replied plainly, the words falling from his lips without so much as a second thought, "but it seems the rumours are untrue. The 'Wallace Girl' is far from dead. But not from death."

"Ha ha." Shilo lay back in the coffin flat on her back, hands clasped over her stomach. "Knock yourself out. You can take whatever you want, I don't care."

Graverobber paused to consider the implications he was nearly certain she hadn't intended. He bowed to her, a mocking gesture that was more pageantry than a genuine salute. He sauntered off along the dark passageway without hesitation, not about to wait for her to change her mind.

The house was as gloomy as it looked from the outside, with the same presence you'd expect from a museum. Graverobber whistled a few notes, listening to the slight echo in the stillness. Sound reverberated here like it did in all large, unnaturally empty places. Nothing about the place indicated that it was anyone's home, at first glance it had all the personality of a hotel.  
Bare frames hung on the walls, lightshades and lamps slowly accumulating a layer of dust in their disuse. Graverobber bypassed the ground floor and went straight upstairs, knowing that anything interesting would be found up there. Odd baubles found their way into his pockets, clinking softly against whatever was already in them. He bounced on the balls of his feet and jingled.

Graverobber wandered. He looked at bugs, relics of childhood, medical equipment, and stuffed animals. He poked through drawers, silently pocketing a pair of white cotton panties. The temptation to leave an IOU in the girl's underwear drawer flared, dying just as quickly. Graverobber moved on down the hallway. He found a bathroom and was, for a moment, filled with jealousy at the sight of the large claw-footed bathtub.

He broke the lock on the next door. When he left that room, it was with a noticeable air of smugness and a brief flash of silver at his fingertips before that too disappeared into a pocket. 


	3. Bugs

Shilo knew the tunnel so well that she could walk it with her eyes closed and often she did. Tonight she walked it with her eyes open and was surprised to see a bluish glow at the end of the passageway. Shilo frowned, for a moment convinced that she was seeing things. She sped up, then suddenly found herself stopping just inside the tomb. He was too distinctive not to recognise, even from behind, even crouched down and hunched over something. Shilo opened her mouth, but he stood before she could say anything. The Graverobber turned, leaving the rucksack he'd been hunched over on the ground. He held a dirty glass jar in his hand, a large, glowing bug still fluttering about inside it. Shilo stared, no longer sure what to say. As the silence stretched she noticed three other identical jars already in place about the crypt, each one containing a live, glowing bug that was the source of the faint bluish light.

"What are you..?" Shilo began, eventually finding her voice.

Graverobber held out the jar, an oddly mischievous look on his face. "I just came by to bug you."

Shilo took the jar from him as if he were something poisonous and the bug something to be rescued. She examined the bug inside the jar, pleasantly surprised to find that this was a species she didn't have in her collection. Her eyes flicked to the Graverobber and she looked at him through the dirty glass for a moment before cradling the bug jar against her chest. "Thank you," she said, "I guess."

The Graverobbed shrugged as if physically dismissing her thanks. He turned to leave, looking over his shoulder at the last second to offer her a knowing smirk.

Shilo stared after him long after he'd been lost to the gloom of the night, frowning as she thought. Inside the jar the insect buzzed, its tiny feet clinking against the glass. 


	4. Goldilocks

"Goldilocks leaves her cave," Graverobber observed, watching her approach with an expression that gave nothing away. "How's life on the outside?"

Shilo leaned against the wall beside him, holding the strap of her shoulder bag both for comfort and in case some back alley ruffian tried to take it. "Nobody notices me," Shilo told him, uncertain as to why that bothered her. She would have thought that the Opera was something unforgettable, but the Graverobber was the only person who seemed to remember. "They don't know who I am. Even the people in shops don't recognize me."

Graverobber smiled at her (she noticed that his teeth were strangely clean for a man who seemed to live on the streets). "People are sheep," he explained sweetly, "the world turns and you're no longer big news. They forget you and move onto the next scandal. That's the beauty of it, kid. They never remember."

The Graverobber pushed himself away from the wall to greet a thin, spindly woman with bright pink hair, leaving Shilo on her own.

Shilo stayed back, observing in silence. She fingered the strap of her bag, feeling the weight of canned soups and instant pasta. She imagined the expression on the checkout girl's face, bored and dull. She replaced the girl's face with her own, imagining herself in the supermarket uniform, her eyes glassy as she scanned each new item. Could she ever be one of those normal people, the ones who forgot?

"She looks so pensive," Graverobber teased, suddenly right in front of her. "What's going on in that head of yours, him?"

"I'm not normal," Shilo blurted, stating it as fact.

Graverobber shook his head, chuckling a little. "Oh, I know," he told her, "believe me, kid. I knew that one already."

"You're not normal either," Shilo pointed out, trying not to look at his face. She didn't want to see if he was laughing at her or with her, fearing the worse of the two.

"Two peas in a pod."

Shilo was about to protest that they were nothing alike when some errant thought made her stop. The list of similarities compiled in her head. It wasn't long, but a few words stood out in bold. They were both peculiar in one way or another, they were both alone, both hiding on the fringes of society. Shilo closed her mouth and looked down at her feet. They were even both wearing boots, though hers were dainty and Victorian and his were modern monstrosities.

"Two ducks on a pond," Shilo agreed with a sigh.

"Corpses and death," Graverobber drawled, sliding down the wall beside her until he was sitting on the ground. "Sickness and disease. Goldilocks and bears."

"You know," Shilo said suddenly, as innocently as she knew how. "You're the one who keeps breaking into my crypt, which makes you Goldilocks, not me."

The Graverobber allowed himself to look momentarily surprised. Then he tugged on a lock of his own hair, amusement dancing about his eyes and mouth. "Next time," he told her, "why don't you leave me some porridge?"

Shilo left, neglecting to tell him that she wasn't entirely sure how to make porridge.


	5. Like Art

**Note**: It seemed logical at the time. If you really want to hear my reasoning, PM me.

* * *

A shadow loomed over her shoulder in the mirror, shaggy and unkempt like the bear he kept joking about. Shilo ignored him, secure in the innocent assumption that he wasn't going to hurt her, and continued delicately flicking the eyebrow pencil against her skin. She was almost done with the left eyebrow but the other side of her face remained hairless, as smooth as if waxed. A large hand suddenly plucked the pencil from her fingers and Shilo turned, a pout on her lips.

"Give that back."

"You have no eyebrows," Graverobber observed, his own eyebrows raised slightly as he looked at her. "And you're bald." His eyes flicked back and forth from her wig to her missing eyebrow. He grinned suddenly. "You're completely hairless, aren't you?"

"I was made that way," Shilo snapped, attempting and failing to grab the pencil back from him. "It was a side effect of my medicine - the poison, it made my hair fall out." Shilo paused, watching his face and the way he didn't seem to find her condition in the least bit unusual. "It never grew back."

"So you draw boring imitations on your face." The Graverobber leaned in close, aiming the pencil at her face. "Stay still," he said when she squirmed away before the pencil could touch her. "Let me show you how it's done."

"You're going to make me look silly," Shilo protested even as she stilled and let him draw on her face.

"Stop squirming," Graverobber instructed, a smirk on his painted lips. "Don't you trust me?"

"No," she replied frankly.

Graverobber just grinned at her response. He smudged and wiped off her perfectly applied left eyebrow, scribbling in its place with alarming speed. It made Shilo worry that it would look like a squiggly dark brown caterpillar had landed on her face, maybe two of them. What on earth was he drawing?  
Graverobber finished with a flourish and spun her about so she was facing the mirror again. Shilo was stunned.

Her eyebrows were drawn as mirror images of the same, surprisingly intricate pattern, positioned in the exact right place where real eyebrows would have been. They made her look strangely┘ saucy. Shilo examined her face from different angles, trying out a frown, then a smile. She looked at the space above her shoulder in the mirror to see Graverobber's wicked grin.

"They look good," she admitted grudgingly.

"You sound surprised," he drawled, handing the pencil back.

Shilo opened her mouth to reply but could think of nothing to say. The silence had gone on too long for a witty comeback when she finally made her reply; "So now that you've broken into my house and drawn on my face, what exactly were you planning to do next?"

"I thought I'd steal some food," Graverobber replied, casually leaning in the open doorway, "sit in a chair, sleep in a bed..."

"Very funny," Shilo told him. She placed the eyebrow pencil back where it belong and pushed past him and into the hall. "You're not sleeping in my bed."

"Not yet," he agreed. She could hear the smirk in his voice.

"Ugh."

"Daddy wouldn't approve," Graverobber teased, following her down the stairs.

"You're disgusting," Shilo pulled a face,


	6. Food

**Notes**: A little longer than usual, only because I was assured that these two work better as one narrative rather than two separate pieces. Thanks to everyone who's reviewed so far. Remember - reviews make the story grow faster. They may even make it get more interesting...

* * *

"Vanity." The woman Graverobber nodded to was walking stiffly, shoulders pulled back, nose in the air. She had a superior smile on her face, completely ignoring everything and everyone around her. She wouldn't have seen them sitting on the crates even if she'd looked.

Shilo scanned the faces of the people she could see from their perch in the mouth of an alleyway, watching people of all ages, sizes and colours pass by, each of them looking just as arrogant or unhappy as each other. "Liver," she said, pointing out a man swigging from a hip flask, "liver poisoning."  
The game was easy, and they'd been playing it for a few turns already, picking the appropriate deaths they thought each new person would succumb to. It wasn't really fun, just something to pass the time.

"Cancer."

"Botched cosmetic surgery."

"Overdose."

"Suicide."

"Accidental bacterial infection."

Shilo looked at him. "All bacterial infections are accidental."

"The means I'm thinking of is less common."

"Oh." It was a testament to just how morbid Shilo was becoming that she automatically wrinkled her nose, thinking of the most macabre explanation. "Ew," she added, looking at him again, "I hope you don't."

"Safety first, kid. I use a condom."

Her jaw dropped open. He grinned. Shilo decided that it was best if she took that as a joke. "How do you think you'll die?" Shilo asked, turning their game in on itself.

Graverobber was silent and pensive for a moment, turning the ideas over in his head. "A broken heart," he answered, then shook his head as if to dispel such a romantic notion. "If the genecops don't get me first. You?"

"Starvation," Shilo replied without hesitation, thinking of her piteous cooking skills. "Or hypothermia." And the frozen electrical services keeping her house in the dark. It was a wonder there was still running water. She didn't know how to pay off the money owing or even who to pay it to. As far as the electrical company was concerned their contract had died when Nathan Wallace had. Shilo sighed, turning a little only to see Graverobber watching her. "I can't cook," she explained. Sudden and stupid, inspiration struck. "Can you cook?"

"Sure."

"Really?"

"No."

Shilo rolled her eyes. "Why do I even talk to you?"

"You like creepy older men," Graverobber suggested, clearly joking. He watched her a moment. "I don't cook, I scavenge."

"But... I've seen the money you make. You could buy food."

"Scavenging," Graverobber said, getting to his feet, "is more fun. Come on, I'll show you."

Shilo put her hands in his and let herself get pulled to her feet. "You are such a bad influence on me," she groused, following him down another back street to god knows where.

* * *

The spread was ridiculous in its variety. A jar of unopened pickles sat next to a slightly squashed loaf of bread, a dented box of shortbread cookies and an entire wheel of cheese. A few silver tins that had turned out to be carrots, peaches and condensed milk respectively sat in the middle of the bright red lace 'picnic blanket' that Graverobber had unearthed from a department store dumpster.  
Shilo should have realised that he would never fail to surprise. She was very used to thinking of bins as containers full of rubbish, not as a box of opportunity. She was rapidly coming to understand that the graverobber saw them as everything from refuge to dumping ground.

"Here," Shilo looked up to see her dining companion offering her the hilt of a small knife. "You need it to eat with," he told her, talking to her as if she were a very small child who obviously didn't understand such a simple concept.

Shilo took the knife, giving him a contemptuous look. "Has anyone ever told you that you can be really annoying?"

"Frequently." Graverobber tore open the bag of bread, dipped a piece into the condensed milk, and proceeded to eat dessert first. "It's a point of pride."

"Well it's annoying," Shilo told him. She hesitated, then picked up the can of peaches. "So this is how you live," she asked, spearing a peach slice on the end of the knife. She looked about, even in the glow of the street lamps this place looked as if time had forgotten it. Sometimes it seemed as if everything was crumbling.

"The lace is purely for your benefit," Graverobber told her, stretching out on the bright red fabric and lazing, looking up at the starless sky. "Yes, this is quite the glamorous life I lead."

"Do you like it?" Shilo asked, the flavour of artificial peaches on her tongue.

"Would I live this way if I didn't?" he asked in reply.

Shilo shook her head. No, He wouldn't live this way if he didn't enjoy it somehow. He couldn't. She began to wonder just what exactly was so fun about living on the fringes like he did. What was it about the job that he did, the trade that he practiced, that held such allure?  
"Can I come with you?" she found herself asking, "the next time you... harvest?"

Graverobber didn't look at her, but she could see it when he grinned, obviously amused by her request. "Sure, kid," he chuckled. "You'll love it. More glamour than you can bottle. And after we're done we can have a picnic with teddybears and little cakes with pink frosting."

"You're making fun of me. I'm serious," Shilo insisted. "I want to know what it's like."

"You know what it's like. You've seen it first hand."

"I wasn't sleeping in coffins back then," she pointed out, part of her insisting that she must be insane.

"Alright," he said eventually. "Teaching you to 'cook', how to do your eyebrows, taking you about the graveyeard. You're going to owe me something big someday soon."


	7. An Education

The pouch was full of odd paraphernalia that Shilo was certain had not been in common circulation for over a hundred years. Perhaps two hundred. They had that look about them, the kind that inferred that whatever you thought you were here for, healing was not what would find you.  
The tools were mirror bright, shining a little under the moon. She had only ever seen him use the syringe. Now morbid curiosity made her wonder what the other tools were for.

"You can still sell body parts to universities and hospitals," he told her as he worked, disassembling the freshest corpse he could find for her benefit and learning. "Synthetic parts, flesh, even hair and teeth can be sold. But the real money is all in your head."

Something cracked. A squelch, and suddenly Shilo was looking at the top of a decomposing brain. Grayish blue, only just beginning to secrete liquid that glowed gently in the dark. It wasn't as bright as the glow she was used to seeing. Frowning, Shilo looked up to see the Graverobber assessing her reaction.

"A week," he told her, "maybe two, before the drug has finished cooking. After that it has a shelf life like anything else. Eventually the flesh dries out or rots way. Bodies are just incubators, kid."

"So a graveyard is a science lab?" Shilo asked, imagining the Graverobber as a mad scientist. He certainly fit half of that description, the other half was harder to picture. She could see little science in what he did.

"Science lab," he repeated, taking out the brain to leave the skull hollow, "home sweet home, a little piece of brain to call my own." Graverobber grinned at her, popping out the eyes. One came away attached to a bundle of stringy nerves, squashy and leaking black fluid. The other came away perfectly in tact, attached to nothing. "Glass eyes," he said, handing her the curiosity, "you don't see those anymore."

"Except on him."

Shilo wiped the eye on her skirt. She thought about throwing it away, but instead found herself tucking it into her bag. She looked at the oozing, stinking, mutilated corpse, then at the distant flashlight beams. Graverobber didn't act the slightest bit concerned by their slow approach, so Shilo resolved to remain just as calm.

Graverobber tossed the body aside. He dusted off his hands and folded his kit, ready to move on to the next incubator. Shilo trailed along behind him, holding this or that, refitting the capsule on the syringe, observing how he worked. When he had finished for the night, Shilo had acquired a string of pearls that had been buried with the old woman who had worn them - old money that could afford a proper played with the pearls as she stood in the open doorway of her mother's crypt.

Graverobber shifted his weight, glass clinking in his pockets. The gloom had deepened when clouds set in overhead, making it impossible to see his features clearly. All Shilo could see with any certainty was his shape, fuzzy around the edges, and the gleam of his eyes and teeth.

"How did you enjoy your first harvest?" Graverobber asked, the sound of a smirk in his voice.

"It was... interesting," Shilo replied, staring hard to try and make out his face in the darkness. "Very educational."

He chuckled as if she'd made a joke. Warm fingers, gritty with dirt, closed around her own, lifting her hand. Graverobber bowed and lips pressed against her knuckles. "Educational," he drawled, straightening again. "You are an education."

It wasn't until she lit candles in her room that Shilo looked at her hand. A perfect lip print, drawn in black, engraved the middle of her hand. Shilo traced it with a fingertip, smudging the colour into her skin. She began to wonder what she would look like with black lips...


	8. First Try

**Notes**: Two 'chapters' because it's been a while and I realised that while I only intended to be three parts ahead of what I post, I was actually four. A big thankyou to everyone who reviewed... and I'd just like to say now, that the chapter after this is _not_ intended to be the next day. These encounters are linear, but they dont happen from one day to another.

* * *

They looked bruised. Like someone had punched her in the teeth. Dark bluish-black, the colour of domestic abuse. Shilo peered into the mirror, a startled, pale face stared back at her. She quickly ran a washcloth under the tap and raised it to swipe at her lips, stopping at the last second. Her heart was still pounding a million miles an hour, if she'd had hair it would have been prickling. She looked at herself again, imagining the sound of his laughter if he could see her now, staring at her bruised-black lips.

Careful strokes of the cloth took the black away, leaving just the barest of stains. Her lips, as clean as they would be getting, were now lavender and not pink. Shilo hadn't counted on the adrenaline.

* * *

She painted her lips pink, The colour of rosepetals, according to the tube of lipgloss. Her cheeks were splashed with spots of colour, a natural flush that made her look all the more like a porcelain doll. She was breakable, dressed in layers of cotton and lace, tiny white gloves on her hands. A white glass ball hung about her neck from a thin chain, a small circle of bright blue in the centre.

* * *

"Doesn't she look fancy?" He spoke to an invisible audience, or perhaps the to security camera blinking innocently from a nearby corner. "She has hearts on her sleeves and an eye to her chest. Could it be that she's looking for love?"

"That's stretching it," Shilo replied, touching the glass eye self-consciously, "even for you."

"Alas, puns elude me. You do look nice."

* * *

"It's not that bad, kid."

His voice is soothing, his fingers stroking her hair. Human hair, he notices. Shilo's hands shake, her gloves dirty with smudges of black, two fingers covered in a thin, watery liquid that glows just a little.

"Not bad at all, for a first time." Graverobber slings an arm about her shoulders, comforting her in the face of her failure. "If you don't want to..."

"I want to," she interrupts, quiet but insistent. Shilo turns to face him, a stubborn tilt to her mouth. "I'll get it right."

* * *

"It's my mother's birthday tomorrow," Shilo told him at the steps to her crypt, "we always celebrated. It's going to be so strange..."

Graverobber's hand caught her wrist, pulling her back at the last second. He stepped up, his grip tightening, lips crashing down onto hers. The contact only lasted a second, maybe two, but the seconds dragged and seemed to take forever. Shilo was dazed when he pulled away, staring at him in surprise.

"Have a party," he told her, casually walking away.

Shilo stood on the steps for a while, trying to process what had just happened through the tingles of shock and the sudden icy cold of her lips. She could hear him whistling, the sound growing steadily fainter. Shilo slammed the door and ran through the dark passageway and back to her house, heart pounding.

Her lips were bound to be as black as sin.


	9. Chinese

"I always heard it was dogs." Shilo poked through the carton with the pair of cheap wooden chopsticks, picking through noodles and gravy-soaked vegetables. She looked up and eyed the Graverobber's choice of Chinese food with a dubious expression. Lurid, bright pink sauce turned batter-fried meat and stir-fried vegetables into soggy pink lumps. She made a face as he licked pinkness from the corner of his lips.  
"Cats and dogs," Shilo continued, "that's what everyone says."

Graverobber shook his head over her folly, licking a bit of pink from the corner of his mouth. The Chinese food had been his idea. A celebration of her first successful sale. Shilo Wallace had a job now. A source of income that he assured her would soon be the means of turning the power back on in her house.

Graverobber stabbed a bit of soggy-battered pork with the end of his chopstick, holding it aloft. "It's human," he said, after his short examination of the food. He popped the bit of meat into his mouth. "It tastes like humans," he told her, finishing with a grin.

"What?" Shilo laughed. She stopped when his grin only got wider. "How would you know what humans taste like?"

"I could tell you, but it might scar that pretty little mind of yours."

"My mind is already scarred," Shilo pointed out, curious despite herself.

"But those are pretty scars," Graverobber replied, eyeing her forehead as if he could see through her skull and into her some reason the idea that he found her brain pretty made Shilo feel a little warm inside.

"Then do it artistically," Shilo suggested, slurping noodles.

The Graverobber looked at her oddly for a moment, something inscrutable in his expression making her uncomfortable. "I have experienced," he said, putting on a voice much like a purr - the voice he sold in, seduced in, turning unwilling marks over to the dark side; "The delicate bouquet of seared flesh, a sweet aroma like braised meat with the acrid aftertaste of burnt hair. Open bonfires in condemned buildings, cannibalism to keep the wolf at bay. One less mouth to feed feeds your mouth, sating the hunger on a cold winter's night..."

Shilo shivered, letting his words sink in. She couldn't be sure if he was telling the truth or not, talking about a personal experience or something he'd witnessed. It could just be a tale that had been passed around.

"You've eaten people," Shilo said, just to be sure she understood correctly.

Graverobber's eyes flashed with mischief. "In a manner of speaking."

"What...? Ugh." Shilo wrinkled her nose as he did something lewd with his tongue. "You're disgusting."

"You keep saying that," Graverobber pointed out, leaning back against the leather of the couch. "And yet you keep inviting me into your house."

"I never invite you. You just show up!"

"You never tell me to go away..."

He leaned over. Shilo realised what he was going to do a second before he did it and suddenly she had the taste of sweet and sour sauce on her lips. He didn't move away, his face just inches away from hers. "I could eat you," he suggested, his wicked grin making Shilo blush and look away.

"Go away," she told him quietly, wishing she sounded as saucy as he tasted.

Graverobber laughed, settling back on his side of the couch.


	10. Kittens

Notes: I was a bit depressed when I wrote this one. Just a warning, because I'm sure it shows.

* * *

The mewling box was wedged under a spindly, dry shrub. Soggy and broken from the rain it mewed only quietly, as if its occupants were crying because they'd lost all hope and not in desperation of being found. Shilo picked it up without looking inside and took it home, carrying the box as carefully as she could.

She didn't expect the occupants to be alive by the end of her twenty minute walk, but through some miracle two pairs of eyes stared out at her when she opened the box. One pair was still bright and blue, the other was glassy. Her heart broke a little as she picked up the healthier kitten, resigned to watching the other one die like its siblings already had. Shilo took the bright-eyed kitten away and upstairs, leaving the box and the dead kittens downstairs. She didn't have the heart to get rid of them straight away.

-

The door swung open, a gleam of silver flashed about his fingers and disappeared into a pocket. The Graverobber stepped into the house as if he owned it; Keys did indeed make the whole breaking in thing a lot easier.  
The house was quiet, something he didn't consider in the least bit unusual. The decaying cardboard box on the table though, that was a bit unusual. Graverobber peered inside, his nose wrinkling a little. "Interesting choice of groceries..." He picked up one of the kittens, examining the limp little body before tossing it back into the box. "Kid, you are so weird."

Graverobber abandoned the box to make his way upstairs. Experience had taught him that if Shilo wasn't in the kitchen or parlour, she would be in her bedroom or the bathroom. He liked to catch her at inopportune times, when she was just pulling her panties up in the bathroom or wigless and yet to paint on her eyebrows. The look of mixed horror and annoyance that she gave him made his day.

Alas, when he threw open the door to the bathroom it was to see Shilo fully dressed, sitting on the edge of the bathtub, and cradling something small that was wrapped in a towel. His first and most irrational thought was that she'd given birth - the thing meowed - to a kitten. The thing poked its tiny little nose out, whiskers twitching. Shilo looked up, tired and sad.

Graverobber offered words of comfort.

"Can't find it in you to drown the little rat?"

Shilo glared at him.

"So the box of dead kittens downstairs does belong to you," Graverobber commented, leaning against the wall. "You can't cook things without an oven, princess. But I'm sure we can get a decent fire going in the kitchen sink."

"Shut up," Shilo said quietly, petting the kitten gently. "It's dying."

"Everything dies."

"Kittens shouldn't have to."

Graverobber shook his head. "Kittens, puppies, little baby birds. What difference does it make?" He pushed away from the wall, looming over her and the dying kitten. "Everything dies. A pretty face never saved any lives." He held out a hand, twitching his fingers expectantly.

"It's just a baby," Shilo protested, hugging the kitten close.

Graverobber's expression was suddenly darker. He plucked the kitten from her arms, ignoring her protests, and hurled it across the room. The tiny little body hit the wall with a crack, then fell limply to the tiles, its neck broken. There was no more meowing. Shilo stared at him in horror, as if noticing something terrible for the very first time. "Kittens die," Graverobber repeated. "They shouldn't have to, but they do. It's a fact of life. Snuff it out quick, kid, and at least they don't suffer."

"You..." She had tears in her eyes, threatening to spill. Graverobber sighed and pulled her up. Her hands clutched the lapels of his coat. She burried her face against his chest.

"Kittens die," Graverobber soothed.


	11. Sex

**Notes**: I'm having a bit of trouble being creative on my own. Feel like giving me some prompts? What do you want to see? Which parts of life do you want me to explore?

* * *

It was awkward and strange. Sweaty, messy. Shilo hadn't known where to put her hands, or how to react when he touched her. She felt like just a bundle of limbs connected in the centre, a puppet with its strings cut, she danced under his fingers involuntarily. He touched her face, her stomach, her breasts, smudges of grit left in their wake. He hadn't even washed his hands...

Only afterwards, lying under the rumpled covers of her bed, face pressed against his shoulder, did she start to like it. The Graverobber lay beside her, his breathing indicating that he was at least close to being asleep, one arm still vaguely flung about her, his naked body sprawled across her now-dirty sheets. Shilo was curled up against his side, the blanket pulled up over her chest and clutched tight to hide her bare breasts.

She felt sticky with sweat, the mess between her thighs a strange discomfort that she was too self-conscious to wipe away with the sheet. She had felt detached during, secretly wondering where the fireworks were and why her body hadn't been singing as loudly as the romance novels had described. Nonplussed, it had taken her a few minutes to appreciate the feelings and only in retrospect did she begin to feel that maybe she had liked it.

Shilo woke up almost expecting an empty bed, so she was shocked to see the Graverobber watching her from just a pillow's length away. Shilo sat up slowly, still clutching the blanket. She squeaked when he ripped it away, covering her breasts with her hands with the sound of his laughter echoing in the room. He was just as naked as she was, hair more tangled than usual, eyeliner smudged, so comfortable with himself that she felt even more self conscious.

He followed her into the bathroom that morning, slipping into the bathtub behind her and chasing a wash-cloth with inappropriate touches, whispering lewd jokes into her ear. Shilo eventually gave up being embarrassed. She sighed and leaned back against his chest, letting his hands cover her chest and keep her from the cool morning air.  
"I didn't think it would be so..." Shilo began, trailing off when she realised it might hurt his feelings.

"Disappointing," he guessed, amusement rumbling close to her ear. "The little girl expected angels and Chopin. Have you been reading romance novels, Shilo? You expected blood and pain that was chased away by pleasure that makes you want to scream. You were misled."

"I was going to say 'messy'," Shilo retorted, glad that he couldn't see her blushing.

Graverobber chuckled. "You didn't think it would be messy," he repeated.

"I thought there would be blood," Shilo admitted.

"Not every girl bleeds," he replied calmly.

"And maybe..." Shilo hesitated, wondering if she should tell him that she'd enjoyed sleeping next to his warm, living body more than what had happened before that. "Maybe I thought it would be... better."

"Don't expect fireworks, kid," Graverobber advised her, a hand moving from her breast and under the water. His fingers pressed between her thighs. "Bodies don't ignite without gasoline and matches to help them along."

"You're so romantic," Shilo rolled her eyes.

"You're completely hairless," Graverobber drawled wickedly in reply.


	12. Introductions

Electric light was so unfamiliar that Shilo still opted to use her candles and hurricane lamps. Electricity was useful only for the renewed convenience of appliances such as the microwave or refrigerator. She had used neither today, and had instead made a perilous trip outdoors in the sunlight to retrieve freshly baked sweet treats that were mainly chocolate in nature. Indulgences intended to impress as well as to cater to her own private 'addictions'.

She had dragged out the fine china from a box under the stairs, dusted off the little plates and polished the silver until it gleamed. The activity had left her light-headed, fumes from the decidedly old fashioned polish going to her head and making her giggle hysterically over the _stupidity_ she had insisted upon.

Shilo made certain to wear her most modest outfit, forgoing her eyeball necklace for the string of pearls that had once belonged to... well, not hers, but_ somebody's_ grandmother. She had guests to impress. Guests that needed to be shown how well she was handling things without the guidance of a parent to help her. Guests that may question her judgement when she introduced them to the man who she still wasn't entirely certain she was in a relationship with.

Shilo took a deep breath, patted her wig one last time, and picked up the tray of sweets. She forced a smile onto her face as she carried them out into the living room and hoped that the evening wouldn't be too awkward.

-

"So you're a graverobber...?" The question was so painfully polite that you could almost miss the awkward strain in the woman's voice. Almost, but not quite.

"The Graverobber," he corrected with a smile, frankly delighting in how uncomfortable the lady was. He was no dabbler, the job was his name as well as his title, something that made his introduction to these people even more trying (and fun) than it could have been otherwise.

"Oh." She paused, uncertain. Floundering a little. "And, er, how long have you been..?"

"Years," the Graverobber replied in a drawl, plucking a chocolate chip cookie from the tray on the table and taking a bite. He spoke with cookie-crumbs sticking to his painted lips, making a point to lick them away in the most lascivious way possible. "I'm the best in my business, king of the underworld scalpel sluts." There was a rustle of fabric. Shilo kicked him.

"So you would say that you could provide for Shilo?"

Graverobber raised his eyebrows, breaking the illusion by looking directly at Shilo. "What kind of question is that? What century are you living in, kid?"

"Ask her, not me," Shilo told him, pointing at the woman on the couch opposite them. A pleading look filled her eyes. "Come on, please? Just play along... I told you. This matters to me. I really wanted you to meet my parents."

Graverobber looked back at Shilo's mother, the dessicated corpse in the rotting lace dress that he had carried into the living room for the purpose of this meeting. Shilo's father sat next to her, or what they could dredge up of him - a Repo man suit that was propped up against the back of the couch to resemble sitting. He sighed. "I make a decent enough income," he told the corpse, then looked back at Shilo, a dry expression on his face, as if asking whether that was good enough.

"Ok," Shilo gave in, accepting that he had played along as much as he was going to and trying to force him would only make things more difficult. "Just one more question, I promise."

"Make it a good one, kid," Graverobber replied, polishing off his cookie. "So I can put your mother back to bed."

Shilo thought about it for a moment or two, a slight frown creasing her brow. When she spoke, she had pitched her voice lower, which meant the question came from Nathan and not Marnie. "What are your intentions towards my daughter?"

"I intend on corrupting and preserving her girlish innocence." The flippant remark rolled off his tongue so easily that it almost sounded rehearsed, or like a bad joke. Too quick to catch whether or not he was really serious. Graverobber smiled, making it one of his more dangerous looks. "I intend on keeping her."

Shilo suddenly began to wonder if she'd made a terrible mistake letting this man into her life. Somehow she couldn't make herself care.


	13. Loner

**Notes**: Still looking for suggestions for chapters/snippets. The two that I received have been written and will be uploaded soon. One involves a rabbit, one involves a junkie.

Win a prize if you guess what happens in either one before they're posted.

* * *

Shilo felt oddly detached. Her bag weighed no more or less than usual but somehow the knowledge of the zydrate gun made it seem weightless. She had to keep her hand on the canvas strap just to make sure it was still there, hanging innocently by her side. A zydrate vial was tucked into the pocket of her vest, out of sight, she couldn't stop thinking about it. Genecops had already come by twice to talk to her, concerned for the little girl standing in the dim light from the lonely street lamp. Even at this time of night she couldn't possibly be up to no good. Shilo was too sweet, her wide brown eyes too convincing. And if they happened to stop for too long all she had to do was smile and tell them she was waiting for someone that would be along soon. A friend, a brother, a boyfriend... A client.

The junkie approached her cautiously, at first not sure that she was what he was looking for. A smale and a single word later she had the gun pressed against his skin, a small wad of cash tucked into her pocket. The needle sank through skin, Shilo squeezed the trigger, and the addict stumbled off in a dreamy stupor. She watched him leave as she put the gun away.

Shilo celebrated a little on the inside. Her first solo transaction with a client, first official 'payoff' from her new career - Graverobber would be proud. She wondered if he was really watching. He'd said that he would be, but she hadn't seen any sign of him or heard him humming. The sharp clack of heels against concrete sounded nearby and suddenly she had no time to ponder the whereabouts of the Graverobber. Three sales later and Shilo's single vial of zydrate was empty. The money she had made would pay for hot water and laundry. After discovering coin operated laundromats Silo had resolved never have to wash her clothes in the bathtub again.

She was half way home when she heard whistling. The sound seemed to follow her, trailing along behind her, echoing in the quiet. Relief filled her, spurned by the knowledge that she was not alone. Shilo would never realise that other girls her age, normal girls, would be terrified to think that someone was stalking them in the shadows. Shilo recognised her stalker purely by the tune that he whistled and the crunch of heavy boots against loose gravel at the side of the road. A malevolent laughter echoed down the street and Shilo shook her head. Hammer horror was like a trademark for the Graverobber. "How did I do?" she asked the empty street, skipping a little and twirling in the middle of the empty road. "I did good, didn't I?"

"You were very good," his voice came to her from the opposite side of the road. A moment later she saw his shaggy, shadowy form appear in the gloom. "I especially liked the oblivious helpfulness of those cops..."

"I was just waiting for my boyfriend," Shilo smiled winningly, "it wasn't my fault he was late."

"But you're sure you didn't need a ride?" Graverobber teased her, playing the role of the oblivious and helpful lawkeeper, "you don't need someone to wait with you."

"No, it's ok," Shilo chirped in reply. "I can call him. And if it gets _too_ late I'll just leave."

"But it's dangerous alone at night."

"I have pepper spray."

"This is an awfully odd place to arrange to meet you. How old did you say your boyfriend was again?"

"Oh, I didn't," Shilo grinned, hop-skipping over a puddle. "He's older than I am. Practically ancient."

"I am not ancient."

"Are you my boyfriend?" Shilo asked.

The Graverobber almost stopped in his tracks, recovering a split second later so that only one step seemed slower than the rest. He looked at her, frowning slightly. "I don't know," he said finally. "Do you want me to be?"

"You met my parents," she pointed out. "I thought it was obvious."

"I'm twice your age."

Shilo shook her head, recognising the statement as anything but a protest. It was just a fact, a warning to make sure she knew. As if she didn't already. "I'm half of yours," she shot back. "Anyway, that's not true. You never told me how old you are at all."

"Does it matter?" he asked.

Shilo considered, turning over everything she knew of him in her mind. He was frightening at times, annoying all the time, and in no way good for her. Her father never would have approved, and neither would her mother, or anyone else for that matter. She knew next to nothing about his past, no statistics, not even his real name. But he was trustworthy, and the irony in that made her smile. "No," Shilo said finally, "no, it doesn't matter."

She was probably going to hell. Why not get properly acquainted with the devil beforehand?


	14. Attitudes

**Notes**: Thanks to everyone who reviewed. I haven't said this before, but you guys are what make me keep writing. You never fail to put a smile on my face.  
Still open to suggestions, unless you think I'm just that brilliant and don't need any requests or poking to write brilliant chapters...

* * *

Shilo walked in on her rabbit fornicating with a large feather duster. The rabbit, Mr. Floppy, was obviously having none of the troubles associated with his name and was talking dirty to the feather duster in a sleazy, breathy voice. Shilo stared, horrified and yet fascinated, frozen in the doorway.  
"Ooh," the rabbit crooned, "fuck me, feather duster, fuck me hard!"

"What are you doing?" Shilo asked, staring, dumbfounded, at the man controlling both inanimate objects.

The Graverobber looked up at her, a shameless grin on his face. He lifted the feather duster, waving it about casually as he spoke. "What?" he asked calmly. "You look shocked."

"You were... Were you... violating my rabbit with a feather duster?"

"Yes," he replied, looking at the feather duster briefly before turning back to Shilo with a wicked smirk on his face. "She's a naughty girl, this one."

Shilo shook her head and left the room. She didn't want to know. She didn't want to think about it... My God, she was never going to look at Mr. Floppy the same way again. She wouldn't be able to hug him without wondering if the rabbit was secretly thinking about being squashed against her breasts. Foot-steps followed her down the hall, a hand caught her shoulder just before she could make it to the steps and feathers were suddenly pushed into her face.

Shilo spluttered, swatting the feathers away. She turned on her heel, glaring up at the Graverobber with her fiercest eyes. "You violated my rabbit!" she cried, hitting his chest. The punch was weak, barely more than a light tap, but the very fact that she was willing to hit him said more about her mood than the glare ever could.

"He was asking for it," Graverobber replied, tossing the duster over the banister. Shilo turned from him, refusing to look at him and his unapologetic heard the duster clatter to the floor at the bottom of the stairs and considered making him do all of the cleaning for a week, reconsidering the idea only when she realised it would give him more time alone with her plushies. "Hey," his hand caught her shoulder, spinning her around again until she was facing him. She noticed that he wasn't wearing any of his makeup. He looked naked without it, even moreso than when he was unclothed. "I'm sorry."

"You don't sound like it," Shilo snapped, a pout on her lips.

"I'm not," he admitted, raising a hand to brush his fingers against her lower lip. "I thought it was funny and I'd do it again."

"You're such a jerk!" Shilo slapped his hand away, glaring at him. She could feel the sting of tears in her eyes and hated herself for being so childish. He seemed surprised by her reaction, as if he genuinely hadn't known that they meant that much to her. "Why would I keep them if they didn't?" she demanded through her tears, as if he had asked her aloud. "They were my friends! I never had anything else, and now you've..."

"I'm sorry," he said, and this time she believed him.

Shilo didn't want to talk to him anymore. She brushed past the Graverobber, slamming the door to her (their? he stayed there at least three nights a week) bedroom. Shilo tore the room apart, throwing all of the stuffed animals off her bed, sweeping them off the shelves and kicking them across the floor. Another saccharine memory tainted, another ray of hope that she'd clung to vanished. Shilo fell asleep on the bed fully clothed, exhausted by her emotional outburst.

She woke up alone in the morning. Her shoes had been taken off and placed neatly by the bedside, a pastel pink blanket draped over her legs. Her toys were tucked around her, warmed by her body heat, their shiny black eyes twinkling sadly. Someone had placed a tulip in her rabbit's paws. It was wilted and dying - she hadn't woken up quickly enough to get it into water before nature began its natural decomposition - but she appreciated the gesture for what it was.

Shilo kissed the rabbit on top of its furry little head and lay back on the bed, twirling the flower between her fingers.


	15. Appearances Decieving

**Notes**: *hums a little song* I had it stuck in my head the entire time I was writing this. It was oddly appropriate. Disguise, secret locations, danger... all wrapped up in a deceptive package.

Thanks to all reviewers. You people keep me going.

* * *

She was a skeleton with candy pink hair, her artificial thinness stimulated by a combination of drugs and surgery. She'd had her stomach tightened to the size of a walnut at age sixteen and had never looked back. What had initially been genuine concern for her health had become obsession. She lost sixty pounds, changed her face, and became a new woman for each new nose that she possessed. The pain was put into its place by addiction. Fueled with zydrate she could do what she needed to do to get through to the next surgery table, the next new look and the next new woman to inhabit her skin.

The Graverobber was peddler and God, a hated and beloved fixture in her life. He was there on that street corner, every second night, just like clockwork. The colours in his hair changed from time to time, but the Graverobber was a nice, stable figure in her ever-changing world. Unlike the other junkies, the other people in her world, the Graverobber never changed. He was a constant, and so when things changed, even a little, it was as obvious as a mallet to the face.

Tonight, when the candy-pink skeleton stumbled to his street corner, she reached the grimy little alley in time to see the Graverobber bidding a theatrical farewell to his pet schoolgirl. The man bowed over the girl's hand, pressing a perfect black lip-print into her skin. The girl giggled, swatted at him playfully, then shouldered her back-pack and flounced away into the night.

Schoolgirl pet, she thought, a frown on her face. She had always imagined him with some zydrate-addicted fashion slave; Not the too-innocent little catholic girl who kept turning up on the corner, and never to buy.

The Graverobber turned as she approached, a slick smile on his eternally smug face. "Nice hair, Joanie," he commented, hands hooked in his pockets as he looked her up and down. There was something indefinable in his gaze that made her feel uncomfortable. It was always there, no matter how many times she told herself that was stupid.

This time she had one up on him. "Who's the girl?" Joan asked, spindly arms crossed over her new chest.

"What girl?"

"The school girl," Joan replied smartly, uncrossing her arms to gesture with freshly manicured hands. "The girl who's always hanging around. The one with the fresh, innocent face. That girl."

"That girl," Graverobber replied, and if anything his smirk became even more smug than usual. "Is my girlfriend."

"You're kidding." Floored, that was the only thing Joan could think to say. "You can't tell me she knows what you do!"

"Oh, she helps," he drawled, withdrawing a hand from his pocket and twirling a tiny glowing bottle with his fingers. "I've even given her a district to sell from. She's quite the expert at avoiding detection..."

Joan, assuming that he was joking, still couldn't help but stare at him with open incredulity. "She looks like she's fifteen!" Joan spluttered eventually.

"Did you come here to gossip?" the Graverobber asked her sweetly, dangling the glowing blue from his fingers like a pendulum. "Should I put this away?"

"No!" Joan dug into her handbag, producing a wad of cash. "Here. Gimme the Z."

"Say 'please, Graverobber'." He actually grinned at her, then licked his lips. "I like to hear you beg."

"Please, Graverobber, gimme the fucking Z," Joan whined. She thought that maybe it was possible that the girl [i]was[/i] his girlfriend. He was perverse enough, and manipulative enough.

Money changed hands for goods and Joan left wondering whether the Graverobber was a pedophile. He was whistling a tune as she hurried away, too afraid to lose her source of zydrate to try and needle him further. It took her four steps to recognise the tune, a children's rhyme. She looked over her shoulder to see him watching her. The message was eerily clear. Don't mention the girl again.

Or bears would get her in the woods.


	16. What's in a Name

**Notes**: Thanks to everyone who reviewed. You're the reason I keep writing.

This chapter is dedicated to anyone who hates household chores as much as I do.

* * *

She couldn't imagine him with any other name. She couldn't imagine his ever answering to anything else... So when Shilo found the ID card in his coat pocket, she assumed that it was fake. She certainly couldn't imagine him carrying it around if it really was his actual identification.

But there it was, hard and cold in her hand, a tiny little plastic rectangle with a washed-out photograph of his face and the name 'Colin Loch' printed in government type. The card listed his birth date. Shilo did the math in her head and marvelled at the idea that he could be twenty-eight. She liked it better not knowing his age; Found herself resenting the little photograph for looking like him, despising the card itself for giving her information that was undoubtedly false.

"That's not your name," Shilo said aloud, staring at the card as if trying to make it disintegrate with the sheer power of her mind, "it's _not_."

Disgusted with herself, Shilo threw the bit of plastic. It bounced off the wall, skittering across the tiled floor and out into the hallway. Shilo caught her breath, refusing to look at it now. Instead she made herself look at the means of her unpleasant discovery - the coat floating in mildly soapy water like a great, sodden dead animal, limp in the bath tub. The water was pinkish-grey, swirling with diluted blood and dirt. Shilo had brought it here to wash because she had yet to place any trust in the huge, metal, top-loading monolith in the laundry.

Shilo took a couple of long, deep breaths to compose herself. She hauled the dead animal from the bath-tub and pulled the plug. The weight of the sopping coat smothered her, reminding her of dismal nights in the graveyard and running home in a downpour, a cold, five-fingered vice locked around her wrist. The memories were happy, in the same odd way that washing clothes in the bath tub was happy. It was independence, proof of a life without sudden and frequent fainting spells. It was the heat of steaming water as she re-filled the tub. Small, simple pleasures.

Now soaked through herself, Shilo dumped the coat into the water again and began to strip off her short white dress and black leggings. Two wet splashes later and the coat had company in the tub.

Shilo knelt by the edge of the tub, worrying the last bits of soap from the fabric. This time she heard the foot-steps before he appeared in the doorway. She was getting better at noticing his approach. "It should be done by tonight," Shilo said, giving the coat one final molestation with running water. "Colin."

"What?"

He actually sounded baffled, and when Shilo turned to look at him he was giving her a look that clearly said he thought she was doing one of those weird things she sometimes did and it might be best to humour her.

Shilo stared at him for a moment, noticing how strange it was to see him stripped down to practically nothing, barefoot in her hallway. "Is that your name?" Shilo asked, turning away again to pull the coat from the water and hang it in the shower.

The Graverobber stared at her, bemused, a tiny smirk on his lips. He looked down when Shilo pointed at his feet, catching sight of the ID card that he was nearly standing on. "Alright," he drawled, shaking his head sadly, "you caught me. I'm a good old Irish lad from the suburbs, tragically brainwashed by the sex, drugs and money in the big city. I'm an orphan too, it's a very sorrowful tale."

Shilo blinked. She didn't know what to say. Then she caught the glint in his eye. "You're such a liar," she complained, pouting.

"Fake ID, Shilo," the Graverobber told her, picking up the little bit of plastic. "Sometimes they come in handy."

Shilo pouted a little more, then decided that it wasn't worth being annoyed. Instead she rinsed out her clothes and hung them up as well, expecting him to leave while she worked. When she turned around he was indeed gone, but not very far. Shilo climbed onto the bed with him and settled against his side. "You're never going to tell me your real name, are you?" she asked.

"Beelzebub."

"I'm not joking," Shilo warned, the tip of one sharp little nail threatening to prod his hip.

"I'm using my real name," the Graverobber replied, serious this time. "Whatever I was called before now doesn't matter."

"Graverobber," Shilo murmured the name, turning the idea over in her head. She couldn't imagine him as anything else.


	17. Lies

Selene - I use a spell checker. It doesn't seem to find anything wrong with my use of erroneous letters. If you'd like to edit in its stead, PM me an email I can send my first drafts to?

**Notes**: It's a pack of lies, children. Take nothing in the stories as fact. Some of it might be based on truth, but there's also an awful lot of padding.

-

In school he was a troublemaker, the sole reason that the administration office had the number for both the health department and animal control on speed dial. He brought dead pigeons into class and hid them in his desk, or plucked feathers out and stuck them in his hair. He mixed chemicals in the science lab that shouldn't be mixed and often came up with disgusting smells or miniature explosions. Nobody could ever prove it, but it was suspected that he was the one who had 'accidentally' poisoned Jason Turbott's lunch. The kidney failure might have been coincidental. Or maybe he'd planned it that way.

He was suspended twice a year, finally kicked out for good when he was fifteen and they caught him dissecting the hamster that lived in Mr. McCormack's classroom. On the teacher's desk. With a stanley knife. The final, disgusting irony that he had performed the operation right on top of a self-help book. He couldn't remember the name of it now.

Unfortunately for him, being kicked out of school happened to coincide with being kicked out of home. No more pretty, middle-class house to go home to had left him on the streets with nothing but the clothes on his back and twenty bucks in his pockets. And nineteen cents, a stick of gum, and a lighter that was stuffed down his left boot... if you wanted to be pedantic.

He walked, getting by through a combination of shoplifting and breaking and entering into houses with for sale signs in their front yards. It took him three months before he was picked up by genecops - back in the times when they were actually concerned with keeping the peace, busted for something he hadn't even done. It was in the juvenile prison he was sent to that he met the drug dealer. Cadon Price, which was not his real name, was suave and smooth. When they got out, Cadon taught him how to eke out a decent living.

When Cadon died, stabbed in the chest by a heroin addict, he was the very first person to fall victim to the Graverobber's needles. Zydrate was a more profitable market. Acquiring the zydrate was markedly difficult and more dangerous, but the junkies themselves provided little trouble. Zydrate dealers were always too few. Nobody wanted to get their hands that dirty.

Oh, and by the way. The Graverobber's real name is Charles Winston.

-

"I asked you to tell me a story about your childhood," Shilo said, looking up at the man perched on the edge of the dumpster, watching him toss a candy bar from one hand to the other. "That was a pack of lies."

"How do you know?" The Graverobber asked, bending at the waist and perching even more precariously in order to meet her at eye level. "I could have been telling you the truth."

"You said you'd never tell me your real name," Shilo pointed out, stuffing a dented box of cookies into her shoulder bag. "And dissecting a hamster on top of a self help book? That has to be a lie."

The Graverobber shrugged, sitting up properly again. He tucked the candy bar into a pocket in his coat and jumped down from the dumpster. "You don't think I could be that ironic?"

"I think you made it up."

"You're a very perceptive girl, Goldilocks," Graverobber drawled, a smirk stretching his lips. He offered her his arm for her escort. Shilo took it, bumping her hip against his coat with every step that they took. "What do you think my story is?" he asked her, interested to see what kind of nonsense she could come up with.

-

He was the son of a homeless woman...

-

"Excuse me?" Graverobber asked, half laughing, half offended.

"Shush!" Shilo told him, bumping her hip against his hard enough that it hurt her. She'd forgotten that this was the side he kept his kit. "Am I telling you about yourself or not?"

-

A homeless woman, who might have been a hooker. Nevertheless, she took care of him as best as she could, keeping him healthy and educating him with the help of old newspapers and crayons stolen from diners. That's why he was so streetwise, he was used to living without a roof over his head.

His mother was the one who taught him how to live. She taught him about how to find perfectly good food without needing to pay for it, about the public showers near certain train stations, and the art of shoplifting. They never begged though, they were too good at making ends meet through other means.

It was when his mother died that he found his calling. She died of organ failure because she couldn't pay for a new pair of lungs and it was then that he realised that there was a whole untapped market just waiting for him. In addition, making money from the epidemic that had killed his only family was like a poetic revenge.

-

"Poetic revenge," the Graverobber repeated thoughtfully, draping an arm around Shilo's shoulders. "Very nice."

"But it's not true?" Shilo asked, pre-empting the rest of his response.

"My mother wasn't a homeless hooker."

"She wasn't homeless?" Shilo asked, knowing that he could be tricky with words.

"No."

"She wasn't a hooker?"

"No."

"What was she?"

"A doctor."

-

Sweet little Colin Loch wanted to grow up and be just like his mother. She was successful, a doctor with her own private practice, but somehow she still managed to find time for him. Colin's mother was single, he'd never known his father, but it was a common enough situation at school that he never felt sad about it.

Colin was a straight A student. He excelled especially in English and Science, winning several awards over the years. He was the teacher's pet, of course.

Colin graduated early, having skipped two years throughout his schooling. It was during college that things started going downhill. Like many college students, Colin lived on campus. And like many students, he took the opportunity of being away from home to experiment. Drugs, alcohol, girls... He'd never experienced it before and he found he couldn't quite handle it.

Drugs got him expelled. He couldn't bear to tell his mother. So he claimed that he had simply decided to take a sabbatical in order to gain more practical experience in the world. His mother was understanding, thinking that perhaps Colin just wasn't ready for college yet. She gave him an office job at her medical practice... And Colin discovered zydrate.

He didn't use it himself, not after his previous experimenting, not under his mother's nose. But he saw what happened to the patients who were prescribed the drug and he was fascinated. Colin studied the science behind the drug, he found the orgins and a subculture devoted to the drug's worship.

He pocketted samples and sold them on the street.

Then he began to sneak into the morgues in the city hospitals, using the excuse of passing along paperwork to the offices to gain entry to staff-only areas. He extracted zydrate with hypodermic needles. Soon he had stolen enough equipment and had amassed enough experience to do it all without needing to visit hospitals.

Colin moved from one city to another, telling his mother that he was going to go backpacking across the country with the money he'd earned working for her. He became a zydrate dealer instead. He changed his name, gained a reputation.

He became the Graverobber.

-

"I still keep in touch with my mother. I send her postcards and call her on special occasions."

Shilo found that hard to swallow. "You were with me all of mother's day. We had dinner in my mother's crypt."

"I can honestly say I've never fed soup to a corpse before that day."

"You're making fun of me."

"It's just so easy to do."

"You're not getting any of my cookies."


	18. Homecoming

**Notes**: You could say I was inspired... Possibly by men in bunny-suits. (Seriously, don't ask.)

Thanks to everyone who reviewed. Your words are my addiction.

* * *

Shilo woke to lips fluttering across her skin, barely brushing kisses above and between her breasts. A large hand covered her throat, fingers splayed across the point of her pulse, palm pressing just above her collar bone. The pads of those fingers were rough, the touch too gentle to choke - just a tiny bit of pressure and the hint that if she struggled too much the fingers might just constrict out of instinct.

Shilo didn't want to struggle. Her hands raised, fingers knotting through tangled, dirty-blond and multicoloured hair, pulling him closer, pressing his mouth harder against her. Teeth closed on flesh just above the swell of her left breast. Shilo gasped and arched; She was never sure if she reacted out of pain or pleasure when he bit her. Either way the sensation got her blood pumping, skin burning, a fine sheen of sweat forming on her brow.

His other hand pressed against her stomach, slipping a little on the thin satin of her night-dress. His hips knocked against her legs and she parted them for him, anticipation ringing in her head, heart in her throat under his fingers. Rough material pressed against cotton panties, the metal teeth of a zipper grinding against the crease of her hip. The mouth moved upwards, a hot tongue tracing part of her jaw. Shilo breathed in just as his mouth sealed over hers, a faint smell of smoke mingling with the scent of unwashed graverobber. She groaned against his mouth, tugging at his hair, wishing that he would hurry up and undress her... if that was what he had in mind.

She never asked what he did when he disappeared from the house or when he'd be coming back. It was just an accepted part of what he did, who he was. Shilo sometimes found herself coming up with curious little scenarios, imagining that he had another life somewhere - a part time life where he was someone respectable, maybe even with a family. Then she'd see him at the graveyard as usual or at an alley in one of their districts at night, watching out for her, and the idea would suddenly become ridiculous. Shilo thought she knew the truth anyway. The Graverobber just didn't much care for permanent residence.

His hand slid down to her thighs, yanking the hem of her nightgown up. A murmur against her lips; "Why do you wear this fucking thing anyway?"

"To frustrate you," Shilo replied breathily, then had to bite her lip as rough fingers caught her panties. His hips raised from hers long enough to let him shimmy the scrap of cotton down her legs. Shilo kicked them off the rest of the way as his other hand moved from her throat. She was actually disappointed not to feel the pressure against her skin.

The Graverobber held himself up, balancing his weight between a single hand and his knees. He bent down to kiss her again, smearing what remained of black lipstick against her mouth - they both looked bruised, his mouth and hers. The sound of a zip being undone made Shilo shiver. A rustle of fabric and she arched her back a little, pulling at the collar of his coat. The Graverobber chuckled, the sound swallowed by their kiss. Then he was crushing her, smothering her, the weight of him and the heat unbearable. Shilo loved it.

She was still never sure if what she felt was what it was supposed to be like. She didn't know if her body was supposed to shake the way it did or if her hips were meant to bounce and curl instinctively into his. She wasn't certain if she ever actually felt what it was like to orgasm... But it didn't much matter. She liked his weight and the way his hair would fall around her face. She liked the heat, the sweat that built between them, the feeling of his skin burning beneath her fingers. No matter how hot she thought she felt, he always seemed to feel warmer.

Shilo's hands moved. She didn't realise that they had until she found her fingers wrapped around the thin black scarf looped loosely about his neck. Her hands tightened on the material, tugging on the scarf as she would his hair or his collar. The material pulled tight around his throat and the Graverobber groaned, pushing his upper half away from her with hands planted firmly on the bed either side of her chest, back arching to stay in contact with her from the waist down. Shilo pulled harder, watching his face and the pulse beating at his temple. He moved suddenly, centre of gravity shifting, and pressed one of his hands back against her throat. She tilted her head back, light-headed at just the touch.

Shilo's mind shut down. She liked it when that happened, though it didn't always.

The Graverobber took his hand from her throat and lowered himself onto her, his mouth resting by her ear. Shilo's hands patted his hair, her body relaxing against the bed once again. She had traces of purplish black smeared across her mouth and over her chest, her night-dress was bunched around her middle and she could feel the scrape of the Graverobber's clothing against her naked skin. Shilo sighed.

"What?" he asked, breath tickling against her earlobe.

"You still had lipstick on," Shilo replied, raising a hand to swipe at her bruised-black lips. "I bet you do that on purpose," she continued, her other hand prodding his side through layers of clothing.

"What makes you say that?" The smirk was audible.

"You always have some weird reason for everything," Shilo replied, suspecting that he did it because it meant she always had to take a bath afterwards and that meant he could slip into the tub behind her. If she decided to just wipe her skin with a wash-cloth he'd probably take it from her and use the opportunity to paw over her body. Not that she minded.

"Maybe I forgot."

"Liar." Shilo grinned.

"Maybe," the Graverobber purred, "I want to see you naked."

"You could just ask," Shilo pointed out. "Instead of sneaking into the bathroom behind me."

"Alright," he said, obviously amused. "Shilo. Will you get naked for me? In the bathroom. With the light on."

"You're so weird," Shilo giggled.

"And yet you seem to enjoy my company." He bit her earlobe, soothing the bite with his tongue.

"Graverobber..."

He didn't reply.

"I need a bath."

Shilo waited. The Graverobber sighed against her ear, then rolled off her. He gestured towards the open door, no trace of modesty in him despite the fact that his pants were still open and somewhere around his knees. Shilo took a moment to rearrange her nightgown so that it actually covered her. She took off her wig and placed it on its stand beside the bed. Then she smiled at him and left the room, knowing that he'd follow once she had the bath-tub full. It probably took him that long just to get his boots off.


	19. Sweet

**Notes**: We enter the realms of almost-plot with this one. I tried to think of something else, I tried to come up with a better idea, but this one persisted. If you're lucky, you might get to hear some urban legends soon.

Thanks to everyone who reviewed, and to everyone who put me on their alerts. Apparently that's now 94 people on alert for this story. You have no idea how tempted I am to hold the next chapter ransom...

* * *

Amber Sweet hadn't been by in a long, long time. She had her own, much more efficient means of procuring zydrate enough to sate her addictions. Being the head of a multi-national, billion dollar company she also had far better things to do than strut through the back-alleys with an entourage comprised of only two bodyguards.

So Shilo knew that bad news was on its way the second she caught sight of Amber's newest body-modification sashaying through the streets. Knowing that Amber wouldn't recognise her even after the disaster at the Opera, Shilo abandoned her post and hurried past the older girl. She could move faster. She wasn't wearing six-inch stiletto heels.

The Graverobber stood in the centre of a cadre of admiring addicts, smirking as they pawed over his jacket. When Shilo rounded the corner he caught her eye and rolled his skyward. She knew they were trying to steal, in their own special little way; If not by finding the vials of zydrate he kept in his mysteriously hidden coat pockets then by making him think they adored him and not just their drug fix.  
Shilo wormed her way through the crowd with careful precision. Those that wouldn't be moved received a subtle poke in the arm from a pin hidden between Shilo's fingers. The sudden shock of pain was automatically followed by a split second of thinking that the junkie had just scored a hit - just enough time to squeeze past before they realised. She had to stand on tip-toe to whisper into Graverobber's ear. Just two words. "Amber Sweet."

They had an instant effect. The Graverobber slipped away from the crowd with the kind of ease that Shilo envied. He disappeared around the corner and the crowd moaned. Shilo dug into her shoulder bag and produced a zydrate gun. A murmur spread through the small crowd like a revelation. Shilo had just pressed the needle against a girl with a plastic face when Amber rounded the corner. Shilo dropped the plastic-faced doll, letting her swoon and stagger away on unsteady feet.

Amber commanded attention, heels clicking, hips swaying. Shilo looked her up and down from beneath her lashes, jealous and disgusted by the way the older girl displayed her body.

"I'm looking for the Graverobber," Amber said aloud, her official tone causing the knot of remaining junkies to scatter. She looked after each one of them, as much of a frown on her face as it could manage. Finally, eyes that were brown today settled on Shilo. "Who are you?"

"I'm just an innocent schoolgirl," Shilo replied, her eyes wide and sincere.

The lie, brazen and obvious as it was, earned Shilo a very breif glare. Then, to her surprise, Amber actually smiled at her. "You have guts," the older girl noted aloud. "You have to know who I am."

Shilo nodded. "You're Amber Sweet. I see your face everywhere these days, because you run Geneco." Perhaps pushing her luck just a little, Shilo chanced an obvious question; "What do you want the Graverobber for?"

"Why should I tell you?" Amber asked, scoffing a little at the innocent young girl standing in front of her.

"I'm... sort of a friend of his," Shilo replied, fiddling with the strap of her bag.

"Friend." Amber looked like she was about to laugh, like the idea of the Graverobber having any kind of friend was so ridiculous it didnt' even deserve to be dignified. Then she took a second look at Shilo, a harder look. She remembered that barely a minute ago this girl had flaunted an obvious lie without batting an eyelid. Amber wondered if perhaps even Graverobbers had friends. The thought made her uncomfortable; Amber Sweet had nobody who liked her without obligation. "Friend," she said again. "Alright. Fine, whatever. You can tell him I have a proposition for him."

Without so much as another glance, or another word, Amber turned on her heel and stalked out of the alleyway, her heels clacking dangerously against the bitumen. Shilo stared after her for a long time before she finally shook her head and turned away.


	20. Permit Me

Notes: Dedicated to Judo Creature, and to Aithilin who let me bounce ideas off her very experienced sounding board until I finally had something I was happy with.

* * *

"What?"

Shilo looked up from the simmering soup, certain that she must have heard wrong. The Graverobber was leaning in the kitchen doorway, the keys to her house still dangling idly from his fingers. He looked unhappy, a frown creased his forehead - she would almost call what his lips were doing a pout.

"I have a permit," Graverobber repeated in utter disgust.

"A permit to rob graves?" Shilo prompted, ignoring the greenish chicken-soup-from-a-can in favour of staring.

"In a technical sense, yes." Graverobber dug in his coat for a moment before producing a very shiny rectangular sliver of plastic. "In the strictest of senses grave robbing is still illegal. Selling zydrate, however, is not. How the fuck she pulled that off..." he trailed off into a scowl.

Shilo stared at the Graverobber long enough that the soup started boiling over. She squeaked and turned off the stove top, slamming the lid down onto the soup pot. "That's what she wanted?" Shilo asked, a frown of her own now gracing her delicate features. "To give you a permit to sell zydrate on the street?"

"For a fee... Fuck!" The sudden curse was accompanied by a fist slamming into the wall. "You know what this means? Permits to sell fucking zydrate? It means any god-damned lousy little punk can just waltz up to Geneco, grab himself a fucking permit and go wild! Amateurs, Shilo! We're going to be inundated by fucking amateurs!"

Shilo was silent for a moment, contemplating the dent in the wall. She wouldn't even bother trying to get him to fix it, it might even be easier to frame the spot and add the caption 'Graverobber has a temper'. "Well," she said finally. "It might mean a price hike. That's good..."

"It's compensation."

He grumbled about it all through the soup. And after dinner. And in bed. Shilo finally had to threaten to kick him out before he'd shut up long enough to let her go to sleep.

-

The news got out fast. For a small initial fee and an ongoing percentage of sales, one could wrangle a permit to sell zydrate. An infestation of amateur grave robbers began to creep into the edges of the cemetery, just as The Graverobber had feared. Shilo barely noticed, except when genecop patrols caught the inexperienced newbies or when someone who thought they were tough enough to stick needles in corpses found themselves panicking or throwing up.

Graverobber handled the intruders first by trying to ignore them... He snapped after all of five minutes.

-

Television was a relatively new addition to Shilo's household appliances. She'd watched tv before, of course, when her father was still alive, but her viewing options had been just a few channels that Nathan had deemed appropriate. Now Shilo was free to watch whatever she wanted, and she had taken to watching the evening news before making dinner. It was mostly the same old things, propaganda, a feel good story now and then, news about the price of stocks and the global organs market, but every so often there was something interesting.

Tonight, Shilo stared at the tv open mouthed. Then she looked up at the ceiling where the sound of running water had stopped only five minutes ago.

Shilo leaped up from the couch and dashed up the stairs without turning the tv off. She hesitated at the last second before peeking into the bathroom. "Did you lock some guy in a mausoleum?"

Graverobber, wet, nude, and soapy, looked at her from where he sat in the bathtub, surrounded by bubbles. "Why would I do that?" he asked, rhetorically, then grinned in a manner that was in no way innocent.

"It's on the news," Shilo informed him, determined not to be distracted by the bizarre cuteness of seeing the Graverobber in a bubble bath. "They say that someone who called himself 'The Graverobber' locked a nineteen year old man in a mausoleum and then tear gassed him."

"But where would I have gotten the tear gas?"

"They also said you molested him."

"That part is a complete fabrication."

"But the rest is true?" Shilo demanded, crossing her arms.

"Aren't you in the least bit impressed that I managed to get my hands on tear gas?"

"No."

He gave her a look.

"Ok, yes. Where did you get it?"

Graverobber leaned back against the side of the bathtub. "Come in and maybe I'll tell you."

-

He failed to tell her about the one they hadn't found. The one that was still shut into an above-ground concrete tomb, slowly suffocating, the smell of fresh rotting corpses in his nose. He might go back there a week or two after the idiot was dead. At least then he might be of use, and certainly more interesting than he had been when alive.


	21. Urban Legends

**Notes**: If my story was actually zydrate, two things would happen. One, I would be making money from it. Two, I would experience a constant and pleasant feeling of numbness every time I opened the file on my computer. Additionally, I might actually be able to sleep in this unseasonable heat.

* * *

At night, The Graverobber haunts the largest cemeteries, guarding the dead from those without proper respect. You could only avoid his wrath if you observed the Graverobber's code, or if you left him offerings in thanks for his generosity. Those that failed in his judgement would be tied up and thrown in open graves, gassed, or subject to various other gruesome punishments which often ended in death.  
Every so often someone would come back from a dare, swearing that they'd met the Graverobber and that he was as big and shaggy as a bear, with skin as pale as chalk and eyes as black as sin.

Occasionally the survivor would mention a very small, annoyed looking schoolgirl standing next to him, but those were dismissed as fanciful additions or some dumb attempt to make the stories more interesting.

-

The Graverobber had returned from one of his many unexplained absences. Shilo had found him sprawled across a couch in the living room, boots on the upholstery, an empty arm of his coat flung over his eyes to chase the light away. Shilo tiptoed away without waking him, intending to show off a newly acquired skill that she'd been working on in his periods of absence.

Shilo was going to make dinner, and not just reheat something that someone else had made.

Twenty minutes later, with a smoke alarm shrieking its displeasure at the world, Shilo began to think that perhaps this hadn't been the best of ideas. Especially not when the Graverobber burst into the kitchen, coat half-off, still mostly asleep, to stare at her with his very driest expression.

"I didn't know we even _had_ a smoke alarm," Shilo protested in vain, attempting to shoo the remaining haze out of an open window with a slightly charred tea towel.

Dark eyes took in the state of the kitchen, the charred mess of what was supposed to be food, the wake of Shilo's desperate struggle to put out the small fire, smoke-stains above the otherwise pristine oven... The smoke alarm died, leaving only a faint ringing in her ears.  
Very slowly, Graverobber slid his arm back into his coat and tugged the monstrosity into its proper place on his shoulders. He checked one of the pockets, then nodded. "Chinese," he decreed.

"Please," Shilo replied gratefully.

"Garlic prawns, fried rice, and lemon chicken."

"That sounds so good right now."

"Please don't try to cook again."

"Never," Shilo replied fervently, shoving the charred remains of 'dinner' straight into the bin.

-

The Graverobber, already a moderately famous figure in the underworld of zydrate addiction, was soon a name that everyone knew. The Graverobber, not just a man, but an idea.

It was as if they'd completely forgotten that he actually existed and instead believed what they heard more than what they saw with their own eyes. It made a sort of sense. They believed what they were told to believe, and apparently the media was starting to tell people that the Graverobber was an urban legend.

-

Magic Li's was a half-way decent takeout store only twenty minutes walk from the Wallace house, with regular customers varied enough in appearance that the Graverobber didn't stand out from the crowd. Ordering was simple. The food never seemed to take very long, and the bill was good value for a takeaway shop. Graverobber had collected his food and was just about to leave when he was stopped by a very insistent shop attendant.

"Fortune cookie for you," the old woman told him firmly, pressing a tiny paper bag against his gloves, poking him with the sharp, paper-covered edge of the cookie until he gave in and took it. "No charge," the woman insisted, beaming at him and showing off two missing teeth - a rarity these days.

Authenticity couldn't be bought, he supposed. It had to be staged.

"You take," she continued, pointing at the bag. "No charge."

Graverobber raised an eyebrow at her. "You do realise I could hear you speaking perfect English," he drawled, "to your husband."

The woman flushed. "Enjoy your cookie," she snapped, then turned on her heel and scurried out the back to the kitchen.

The Graverobber shrugged to himself, then began the walk back to the Wallace house, cutting through a couple of alleyways to make the trip shorter. If he noticed that the people he passed fell silent, only to start whispering furiously amongst themselves after he'd passed, he paid no attention to it. Keys jingled in his hand, flashing in the dim light from a street lamp. This place wasn't exactly home, but it had a nice, welcoming feel to it. A highly repentant, sheepish, delicate little girl might have had something to do with that feeling of 'welcome'.

Graverobber had to grin. Shilo had set the coffee table with her good dining set, and had somehow managed to find a pair black lacquered chopsticks. "My, aren't we fancy."

"If you're not careful," Shilo replied, trying not to look embarrassed, "I might even make you wear a suit."

"Spare me the indignity. Here," he said, tossing the paper bag with the fortune cookie at her, "I got you a cookie."

-

The Quest began the fad by running a front page story about the ghost that haunted the central graveyard. Others soon followed suit, and before long it was common knowledge that The Graverobber was some kind of mythical being. Fleet claimed that The Graverobber was a vengeful spirit, driven by honour and revenge to guard the graveyards. The Reporter claimed that The Graverobber was, in fact, a man... And went on to claim that he was a mystic man raised by a travelling carnival, with powers and skills beyond those of any normal, mortal man.

Rumours of vampirism persisted, fueled by the fact that he was never seen before dark. Shilo actually framed an article from the Journal of Know that featured an artist's rendering and the headline 'Raver Vampire Terrorises Amateur Graverobbers'. It was the closest any of the gossip rags had come to the truth. Of course, The Journal ruined it by running an article the very next week that claimed that the so-called Graverobber was actually a large, purplish bear that had escaped from the circus.

-

"I think it's because you don't have a name," Shilo remarked rather sensibly one evening, gloved fingers delicately pulling the plunger of a large industrial syringe. She tapped the vial once, twice, then pulled the needle from the corpse. "'The Graverobber'. It sounds like something somebody made up, so they assume that you have to be a story."

There was a crunch as heavy boots landed on gravel-strewn grass, and another, more muffled noise as Graverobber dropped a fresh corpse, recently dragged from its resting place, to the ground. "People are sheep," he reminded her, taking the glowing vial that she offered him and tucking it away out of sight, "stupid, impressionable. Not altogether very bright."

"Did you notice the pile of fortune cookies by the main gates?"

A rustle of plastic as the Graverobber pulled the covering from the corpse's face. "I did," he remarks, checking the point of his own needle to make sure it's still sharp enough to crunch through bone, however thin.

"They think you're Chinese."

"It must be my hair."

"You really don't care, do you?" Shilo asked, frowning slightly at him as she carefully pulled a ring off her corpse's finger.

He looked across at her, a familiar smirk on his lips. "It's ridiculously funny." He offered her a delicate gold chain that he'd just plucked from his corpse's neck. Shilo was getting quite the jewellery collection, since he rarely sold the valuable bits that he took from the respectable dead.

Shilo considered the ring in her hands for a moment, then offered it to him in trade. Graverobber took off one of his gloves to slip the ring onto his thumb while Shilo placed the fine gold chain around her neck.

"We could have some fun with these rumours," Graverobber said casually, rolling his tools back into their leather pouch. He wondered if she'd take the bait, or if she wasn't yet so corrupted to consider what he was suggesting. He watched her in the faint glow of the moonlight, a porcelain doll in jewellery robbed from the dead. She came to it on her own, no further prompting from him - the perfect mix of innocence and corruption.

"Can I tell them to leave something better than fortune cookies?" Shilo asked.

Graverobber grinned at her, eyes gleaming in the dark.


	22. Shrine

**Notes**: So apparently I lied about the whole plot thing. Go figure. I did try to write something from Amber's perspective, but it seemed way too contrived... maybe next time. Any suggestions?

Thanks to everyone who reviewed, especially the first timers.

* * *

It was like a museum. Rows of preserved treasures lined the vanity, trinkets that had once been kept perfectly polished and dust free now beginning to tarnish in their neglect. Some of the drawers still smelled a little like a woman's floral perfume, tiny little satchels of dried blossoms hidden away between delicately folded layers of silk and cotton. Shilo felt uncomfortable there, like the miniature portrait of her parents on the wall was watching her, judging her, and despairing at what her life had become.

"But I'm happy," she told the portrait softly, even more uncomfortable when the silence weighed heavily on her shoulders.

Shilo retreated from the room, quickly closing the door behind her. The silence seemed to follow her, the ghosts of her dead family curling up from under the doorway like invisible wisps of icy cold disapproval. It wasn't until she'd run into her room and had Mr. Floppy in her arms that the feeling of being chased by ghosts receded.

-

She tried cleaning once. Sorting through the things in the room and putting them into boxes one by one, dusting the surfaces and spraying the air with freshener to get rid of the stale smell. Shilo put all of the pictures into boxes. She thought she could do it, thought it would be no different from how she'd taken all of her mothers portraits from the hall to expose the wallpaper beneath... But it wasn't.

The second box was barely half full when she started crying.

Strange, that it would hit her now. She felt more like an orphan in that second than she had in the days after the opera, when the power turned itself off and she searched every corner of the house for money to buy food. Even when playing 'dolls' with her mother's corpse and the repo man suit it hadn't felt like reality.

Struck down now, Shilo was forced to flee from the room, leaving the half-packed box and the now-empty vanity as it was and the door to her father's room open.

When she calmed down she found herself in her mother's crypt, curled into a ball by the door and sobbing into her knees. She laughed then, recognising the aftermath of an anxiety attack. It was bizarre, she thought, to finally have her break down now, months after the fact.

-

The boxes we stacked in the hall, all labeled neatly in Shilo's precise hand, a catalogue of her parents' life stuffed cleanly into just eight boxes, linen and all. The Graverobber peered into the open room to look at the stripped down furniture and walls appraisingly. The bed, he noted, was a lot bigger than Shilo's.

He plucked the discarded pen from where it rested on the floor and went through the boxes one by one, scrawling one of two words on each. When he was done, the boxes read either "sell" or "keep" in a messy, angular script.

-

"Is this because I'm growing up?" Shilo asked, looking at the newly made bed, sheets a light beige that contrasted nicely with the chocolate brown of the pillows and coverlet.

"Pink isn't just for little girls," Graverobber answered, surveying the new colour scheme of chocolate and earthy tones, Shilo's bug collection hung on the walls in their cases.

"You could keep some things in here," Shilo said, looking up at him, "if you wanted to."

The Graverobber grinned at her. "Are you actually asking me to move in? After this long?"

"I... thought I might make it official."

"Goldilocks inviting the bear to stay? How poetic."

"You're Goldilocks," Shilo reminded him, tugging on a lock of his hair.

"That makes you a bear, Shilo."

"That makes you into bestiality," Shilo replied primly.

The Graverobber grinned.

Shilo's eyes widened; Not because she thought he was serious, but because of the instant set of mental images playing in her head. She hit him. "Ew!"

"You brought it up."

-

She turned her mother's crypt into the museum, taking the time to dress her body in clothes that still smelled faintly of lavender. She placed the portrait of her parents in the coffin, tucked beneath Marni's delicate, spidery hands - extra careful now that the finger bones were beginning to come apart.

A perfume bottle was placed by the corpse's head and one of her father's shirts tucked beneath the dried, brittle hair. A little part of him that could be kept close to her.

She thought it would be appropriate to put the lid back on now, but knew she would never be able to move the huge stone slabs. She settled for lying a sheet over the top of her mother, covering her from head to toe in the soft cotton.

It would do for now.


	23. Halloween

**Notes**: Just a short little interlude inspired by Halloween. And possibly, in a roundabout way, by a dream that involved cruise ships.

* * *

Shilo peered intently into the mirror, drawing a careful arch of an eyebrow on her face with a dark blue pencil. Habit made her feather the lines, giving the illusion that the eyebrows were real and not just drawn on with expensive waterproof eyeliner. She was so intent on her task that she didn't notice that Graverobber was standing behind her until he plucked the pencil from her hand and spun her around to finish her left eyebrow for her.

Shilo's jaw dropped. She stared.

"Close your mouth, kid. You'll swallow a fly."

Shilo closed her mouth but continued to stare. "Graverobber?" she asked, just to be certain that the man she was looking at was actually him and not some bizarre apparition that had appropriated his approximate shape. The man standing in front of her in her bathroom has the same features, the same body language, but he's dressed like a businessman in a very classy suit, hair neatly tied back to disguise the random rainbows of colour. She suspected he might have even applied foundation to his skin to make himself appear less pale. The result is completely shocking. She's not sure she likes it.

"You look like a goldfish," he said, which made her realise that she was gaping again. "I suppose I can take your stunned silence as approval."

"You look... respectable."

"I try."

"Where did you get that suit?" Shilo asked, eyeing him critically as he examined the tube of metallic blue lipstick that would soon be painting her lips.

"Wouldn't you like to know. Hold still." The Graverobber smirked. He uncapped the tube of lipstick and waited for her to open her mouth so he could apply the lipstick.

Shilo held still and silent until her lips were painted in the blue, then pressed her lips together. "I just know," she said, "that somewhere out there, there's a naked corpse in a funeral home." She didn't actually believe it, though she wouldn't put it past him.

"I robbed a lawyer," Graverobber told her seriously.

"Did he try to bite?"

"No, he knew what was good for him..." The Graverobber looked her up and down. "You're very blue tonight, Shilo. Something got you down?"

Shilo looked down at her ensemble. Strawberry Shortcake meets Gothic Lolita. She wore sparkly blue Mary-Jane's, white tights, and a dress that looked like the bastard child of a Victorian dressing gown and a sexy French maid uniform. To top it all off she'd put on a bright blue wig. She realised, with both dismay and amusement, that they would look really weird together tonight. "I'm going to look like your hired escort," Shilo sighed.

The Graverobber grinned and offered her his arm. "They wont care. Nobody will even notice."

He escorted her to the door, and stopped her on the front step to pull her into a kiss. When he pulled away he looked more like himself, his lips stained the same shade of blue as hers. Shilo grinned at him and pulled him down the stairs and out through the gate. Within minutes they blended into the scenery, just like any other costumed couples or groups on their way to parties or clubs. It was her first Halloween outside the confines of her room.

Shilo intended to enjoy it.


	24. Costume Party

**Notes**: Sort of a part two, continuing on from the last chapter/snippet. Inspired indirectly by the Trickster Boys and their exploits at a fictional pagan gathering.

Thanks to everyone who reviewed, and thanks for your patience about updates.

* * *

A large purple monster lounged in a corner behind the buffet table. It was a full body suit, with large goggles for eyes and no discernible holes anywhere else. Presumably there was a zip somewhere hidden in the luridly coloured fake fur. Shilo couldn't imagine anyone dedicated enough to actually have themselves sewn into their costume, but she wasn't going to rule that out either.

She stood by the punch bowl, Strawberry Shortcake in shades of blue and the youngest person present at this particular soiree. She could see other girls around the place - dressed in tiny outfits meant to represent various animals, the only evidence of which was either a fake-fur tail or cute little ears on a headband - but the youngest was still at least two years older than she was and getting paid for her time.

Shilo was not getting paid.

She looked over her shoulder, trying to find the Graverobber in the mess of upper class middle aged men and their trophy wives and independently rich socialites and their boytoys. The crowd in the club was a riot of colour and flashing jewellery. White teeth bleached to ultraviolet brightness. She saw a grey-haired man in a Superman costume staring at her and pointedly looked away.

"So what's a girl like you doing in a place like this?"

Shilo turned in time to catch the cheesy smile from the young socialite and just knew the poor boy was going to put his foot in it at some point. He looked drunk. He probably was drunk. And at least five years older than she was. "Does that line ever work?" she asked, purely out of curiosity.

"Not really," he admitted with another grin. "But you have to break the ice somehow, right? I haven't seen you at one of these things before so..."

"It was a spontaneous decision," Shilo told him, not sure it would go down too well if she told him how exactly she'd actually wound up at this party. She'd been wandering about with the Graverobber when they'd spotted a group of moderately well-known people walking along the street in one dazzling knot of rhinestones and tailored costumes. It had been Graverobber's suggestion to just casually tack themselves onto the end of the party and see how long it took them to notice they weren't meant to be there.

So far not even the bouncers had even blinked. Shilo was begining to think that perhaps Graverobber actually had been invited (plus one, perhaps) and he just hadn't told her.

"Are you here on your own then?" The kid asked.

"No." Shilo looked around again, unable to spot the Graverobber in the crowd. Superman was glaring at her new companion. "I just seem to have lost my..."

"Date?" The boy suggested. "Employer?"

"Father." The voice piped up behind the boy, who jumped. Shilo turned back again to see the Graverobber in his respectable lawyer costume looming up behind the tipsy youth. "Shilo, are you going to introduce me to your friend?"

"Oh. Um... Some guy that hasn't introduced himself, meet my," she hesitated, caught his smirk, and decided to just go with it, "my father. Dad, this is some guy who hasn't introduced himself yet."

"It's always a pleasure to meet Shilo's friends." The Graverobber smiled and came to stand beside her. He snaked an arm around her waist then placed his hand firmly over her breast, clearly territorial and trying his hardest to scare the kid silly.

"Um..." The kid looked at Graverobber's hand, then away. He backed up a step. "Uh, I think I'm going to go talk to someone else..."

"That was mean," Shilo said when the kid had melted away into the crowd. "And weird. _Dad_."

"I don't know what you're talking about." His smirk said otherwise.

"You're disgusting."

"You haven't said that in a while." The Graverobber grinned down at her, then bent to kiss her blue lips. "Say it again?"

"I hate you."

"Now you're just flattering me."


	25. The End

**Notes**: This is probably the last piece of Repo fanfiction I'll be writing for quite some time. It doesn't wrap anything up (not really); True to form it's rather open ended, actually.

Thanks to everyone who reviewed, and anyone else who will review after this chapter. You guys are and will always be the best.

Also, I apologise for the bad poetry.

* * *

-

She lurked in the darkness all pale and sweet,  
Standing on dirt with layers of dead underneath.  
Her eyes were bright and shone like the moon  
As she stood there and smiled in front of the tomb.

With one simple movement the door opened wide,  
Exposing rows of headstones stacked side by side.  
Coffins dug into walls and named with dainty script  
A screwdriver, a crowbar, and they'd be open real quick.

She read each name and each date while her partner made haste  
To crack open each coffin with a kiss of steel and weight.  
He dragged the wealthy corpses from their final peace  
And laid them in rows down on the floor's marble sheet.

She takes a needle from her coat where it was hid,  
Uncaps the vicious hollow point that makes the tip;  
And slides it deep through brittle bone and skin  
To suck up the blue glowing enzyme within.

Twenty-one years until it catches her cold,  
Aches made when she was young, brittle and bold.  
Immunity cheapened eventually blows away,  
Leaves her in the dust. Curtains down. It ends today.

-

The cold marble that made up the inside of the tomb was covered in dust. It had been months since Shilo had set foot inside her mother's resting place but he can still see the faint outline of her footprints in the dust. The Graverobber stood beside the tomb, looking down at the bones within. This was her temple - Shilo's own form of ancestor worship. A family tomb.

It was only right that she lie there too.

He cleared away some of the dust, shifting yellowed photographs and the crumpled suit that she used to imagine was the remains of her father. The altar of her past laid out on the cracked marble of her mother's sarcophagus. He placed her stuffed rabbit beside the portrait of her mother and laid a single red tulip on the stone.

Shilo's body was smaller than he remembered, much more delicate. Her muscles were soft and pliant under her cold skin, rigor mortis had fled the day before and she had begun to smell. The Graverobber dressed her carefully in her best dress and coat. He slid thin cotton gloves onto her hands, smoothing the material over each finger. He used spirit gum to glue the wig in place, so it wouldn't come loose when he carried her. She looked pretty without it, but he had always liked the look of the long black hair framing her face.

He lay her down in the marble coffin beside her mother's bones and gently brushed a lock of hair from her face. The needle looked strange in his hand this time, and surreal when he pushed it through to her brain, careful not to damage her face.

The plunger drew back, filling the syringe with bright, clear liquid with a faint glow. The Graverobber smiled at her. "Here's to you, kid. It's been swell."

He placed the tiny glass vial in one of her gloved hands, tucked away where nobody would see it until the glow was strong enough to bleed through the cracks between her fingers. Nobody would be coming inside this tomb for a long time; Not until someone had the courage to take back the house itself.

The Graverobber knelt down in the dust beside the coffin. He withdrew a small orange bottle of pills from his coat pocket and swallowed as many as he could in one go. Only when his fingers began to feel numb did he take out the pistol.

"Nobody robs the Graverobber," he chuckled to himself.


End file.
